A long-awaited debut after several EPs, demos, a single and a split, Vestal Claret’s Bloodbath was released on vinyl through Cyclopean Records late in 2011. The album, a double-LP, found the Connecticut band’s lineup of vocalist Phil Swanson, guitarist/bassist Simon Tuozzoli and drummer Michael Petrucci joined by a range of guest guitarists and vocalists, including members of Forsaken, NightBitch and Black Pyramid (among many others), as they ran through more than an hour’s worth of dark, classic metal, touching on doom here and there but adherent to atmosphere more than to genre. The story of how Vestal Claret even got to that point is a winding one, with the band starting up in 2005 concurrent to Swanson’s fronting Upwards of Endtime before joining Hour of 13 and Tuozzoli recording initial Vestal Claret demos at his UP Recording Studio (where Bloodbath was also put to tape), and the band eventually bringing in Petrucci for drums, who now also plays in Tuozzoli’s heavy rock outfit King of Salem as well as fuzz-deliverers Curse the Son in addition to being a professional, touring percussionist for the Blue Man Group. But even through all of that and more – Swanson in and out of Hour of 13, Seamount, etc. – Vestal Claret managed to get a record out, and a different version now shows up on CD through the upstart label, Nine Records. What’s different? The guest appearances are gone, which leaves Tuozzoli, Swanson and Petrucci on their own as a trio for Bloodbath’s 71-minute duration, and the tracklisting has changed, giving the CD a different flow than the LP edition, with parts recorded following the first Bloodbath release. So basically, Bloodbath is two albums, with mostly the same songs, and this CD is the second of the two. The “band version.” I told you it was complicated.

I didn’t hear the original Bloodbath, so I won’t endeavor to compare the two, but it’s immediately commendable that the 12 tracks are they’re presented on the CD sound neither incomplete nor like there would even be much room to add more to them. Sure, the arrangements are fairly straightforward – guitar, bass, drums, vocals – but Vestal Claret sound like a cohesive unit across the album’s course and whether it’s on the catchy chorus of “Tales to Those Forgotten” or the dark, disturbing narrative of “Missing Girl,” they seem more than capable of getting their point across on their own. Opener “Hex of Harm” and the penultimate “Allowance of Sin” previously appeared on the Virgin Blood single (review here), and like that release and the band’s work elsewhere, they skirt a line between cultish devil worship and indecent, graphic lyrical description, Swanson’s lyrics pushing an envelope of Satanic psychosis particularly on “Missing Girl,” where cuts like “Ritual of Revival” and “Hex of Harm” (who knew black magic was so alliterative?) find him casting spells in his trademark vibrato, hit voice perfectly suited for Tuozzoli’s classic metal guitar work. “Hex of Harm” is the longest track on Bloodbath at 9:27 (immediate points for opening with it), and balances well the driving rhythm, strong hook and darkened atmospheres that follow, each piece leaning toward one or more such aspects of the band’s sound, like the more rocking “Devil’s Daughters” or the fuller build of “The Correlation,” which follow, as the album plays out its bleak course. Tuozzoli and Petrucci work exceedingly well together on faster tracks like “Blood Oath” and the slower vibing of the intro to “Submissive to Evil,” and though the music rarely veers into doomed territory, that feeling is never far off, particularly with the drama Swanson works into his delivery on “Missing Girl,” taking on a touch of a British accent for the verses over the chugging riff that gives way to a bridge that winds up as a secondary instrumental chorus. How many times Satan is evoked throughout these cuts, I don’t even know, but the best line comes from “Missing Girl”: “It’s always said the devil has his due/He’ll be paid in full before the day is through,” and though the song’s thematic is disquieting, its intro verses actually creepy as opposed to just creepy-sounding, it’s actually one of the best, most creatively expansive songs on Bloodbath. But wow, that’s creepy.

They follow with “Blood Oath” and “The Templar’s Idol,” which are reportedly the first two songs written for the band and wind up fairly demonstrative of the overall Vestal Claret ethic, which is to set occultisms to classic riff-led metal. Petrucci tosses off killer fills in “Blood Oath” to go with the swing of the central progression, and though it’s a little slower, “The Templar’s Idol” has a post-Sabbath stomp that hearkens to early metal and all the dark powers it contains. “Tales to Those Forgotten” joins “Hex of Harm,” “Ritual of Revival,” as well as “Submissive to Evil” and “Allowance of Sin” still to come in providing a landmark chorus to anchor the listener bold enough to feel their way along Bloodbath’s dank stone walls, and “Endurement to the Heirs of Shame” boasts a slower, fatter groove that sets up the opening riff of “Submissive to Evil,” which any cult rock band worth its salt would be jealous to not have thought of first. Like a lot of the album, “Submissive to Evil,” “Allowance of Sin” and “A Call to Satan” have appeared on Vestal Claret releases before – all three were included on the 2007 demo, Ritual and Rehearsal, for example – so the hooks might be familiar to anyone who’s chased down their work previously, but it’s nonetheless gratifying to hear them in this finished, complete form, and to hear them presented as they are on the CD makes Vestal Claret sound all the more like a viable band. Tuozzoli takes a well-deserved solo in the second half of “Submissive to Evil,” does some subtle layering work on “Allowance of Sin,” and “A Call to Satan” rounds out Bloodbathby living up to its title, Swanson assuming the role of invocator performing a ritual sacrifice in hopes that the devil will appear. We never get to find out if he shows up, but Swanson makes a convincing case in the lyrics all the same, all blood and semen and dead animals as they are, and “A Call to Satan” rounds out the CD of Bloodbath with one last flash of occult deviance, rising to a fitting musical peak while the vocals follow suit in their dark sense of sacrament. In its varied rites, Vestal Claret’s full-length is probably not going to be for everyone, but neither does it make a minstrelsy of its horrific aspects. As far back as some of this material goes and with the trio’s involvement in other projects, I don’t know how soon Bloodbathmight get a follow-up, but as a summation of what they were able to pull together over the better part of a decade, there’s more than enough material here to satisfy those whose lust for blood extends beyond the standard cult posturing that’s so prevalent today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 2nd, 2013 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Reviews.
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